From the Nobel Prize-winning author: “A capacious, funny, threatening novel” of wandering souls and political upheaval in 1930s Portugal (The New York Times Book Review). The year is 1936, and the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar is establishing himself in Portugal, edging his country toward civil war. At the same time, Dr. Ricardo Reis has returned home to Lisbon after a long sojourn in Brazil. What’s brought him back is word that the great poet, Fernando Pessoa, has died. With no intention of resuming his practice, Reis now dabbles in his own poetry, wastes his days strolling the boulevards and back streets, engages in affairs with two different women—and is followed through each excursion by Pessoa’s ghost. As a fascist revolution roils, and as Reis’s path intersects with three relative strangers—two living, one dead—Reis may finally discover the reality of his own chimerical existence. “A rich story about human relationships and dreams.”—The New York Times Called “a magnificent tour-de-force, perhaps one of the best novels published in Europe since World War II” (The Bloomsbury Review) and “altogether remarkable” (The Wall Street Journal), The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is a PEN Award winner and stands among the finest works by the author of Blindness. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero

A “marvelously amusing” political fable in which part of the European continent breaks off and drifts away on its own (Publishers Weekly, starred review). A Nobel Prize winner who has been called “the García Márquez of Portugal” (New Statesman) chronicles world events on a human scale in this exhilarating allegorical novel. One day, quite inexplicably, the Iberian Peninsula simply breaks free from the European continent and begins to drift as if it were a sort of stone raft. Panic ensues as residents and tourists attempt to escape, while crowds gather on cliffs to watch the newly formed island sail off into the sea. Meanwhile, five people on the island are drawn together—first by a string of surreal events and then by love. Taking to the road to explore the limits of their now finite land, they find themselves adrift in a world made new by this radical shift in perspective. As bureaucrats ponder what to do about their unusual predicament, the intertwined lives of these five strangers are clarified and forever changed by a physical, spiritual, and sexual voyage to an unknown destination. At once an epic adventure and a profound fable about the state of the European project, The Stone Raft is a “hauntingly lyrical narrative with political, social, and moral underpinnings” (Booklist) that “may be Saramago’s finest work” (Los Angeles Times). Translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero

“A romance and an adventure, a rumination on royalty and religion in 18th-century Portugal and a bitterly ironic comment on the uses of power.” —The New York Times Portugal, 1711. The Portuguese king promises the greedy prelates of the Church an expansive new convent, should they intercede with God to give him an heir. A lonely priest works in maniacal solitude on his Passarola, a heretical flying machine he hopes will allow him to soar far from the madness surrounding him. A young couple, brought together by chance, live out a sweet, if tormented, romance. Meanwhile, amid the fires and horrors of the Inquisition, angry crowds and abused peasants rejoice in spectacles of cruelty, from bullfighting to auto-da-fe; disgraced priests openly flout God’s laws; and chaos reigns over a society on the brink of disaster. Weaving together multiple storylines to present both breathtaking fiction and incisive commentary, renowned Portuguese writer and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, José Saramago spins an epic and captivating yarn, equal parts historical fiction, political satire, religious criticism, and whimsical romance. Hailed by USA Today as “an unexpected gem,” Baltasar and Blimunda is a captivating literary tour de force, full of magic and adventure, exquisite historical detail, and the power of both human folly and human will.

A proofreader realizes his power to edit the truth on a whim, in a “brilliantly original” novel by a Nobel Prize winner (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Raimundo Silva is a middle-aged, celibate clerk, proofing manuscripts for a respectable publishing house. Fluent in Portuguese, he has been assigned to work on a standard history of the country, and the twelfth-century king who laid siege to Lisbon. In a moment of subversive daring, Raimundo decides to change just one single word of text—a capricious revision that completely undoes the past. When discovered, his insolent disregard for facts appalls his employers—save for his new editor, Maria Sara. She suggests that Rainmundo take his transgressions even further. Through Rainmundo and Maria’s eyes, what transpires is an alternate view of history and a colorful reinvention of a debatable truth. It’s a serpentine journey through time where past and present converge, fact becomes myth, and fiction and reality blur—especially for Rainmundo and Maria themselves, who begin to find themselves erotically drawn to each other. “Walter Mitty has nothing on Raimundo Silva . . . this hypnotic tale is a great comic romp through history, language and the imagination.” —Publishers Weekly Translated by Giovanni Pontiero

On the first day of the new year, no one dies; the reality hits home as families are left to care for the permanently dying. Death sits in her apartment and contemplates her experiment: What if no one ever died again?

The Nobel Prize–winning author of Blindness recalls the days of his youth in Lisbon and the Portuguese countryside in this charming memoir. José Saramago was eighteen months old when he moved from the village of Azinhaga with his father and mother to live in Lisbon. But he would return to the village throughout his childhood and adolescence to stay with his maternal grandparents, illiterate peasants in the eyes of the outside world, but a fount of knowledge, affection, and authority to young José. Small Memories traces the formation of a man who emerged, against all odds, as one of the world’s most respected writers. Shifting between childhood and his teenage years, between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this mosaic of memories looks back into the author’s boyhood: the tragic death of his older brother at the age of four; his mother pawning the family’s blankets every spring and buying them back in time for winter; his grandparents bringing the weaker piglets into their bed on cold nights; and Saramago’s early encounters with literature, from teaching himself to read to poring over a Portuguese-French conversation guide, not realizing that he was in fact reading a play by Molière.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals—and a young boy—whose lives intersect in Paris in this "feel-good escape” (The New York Times). Paras, short for "Perestroika," is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon at dusk, she finds the door of her stall open and—she's a curious filly—wanders all the way to the City of Light. She's dazzled and often mystified by the sights, sounds, and smells around her, but she isn't afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city's lush green spaces, nourished by Frida's strategic trips to the vegetable market. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather nears, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself? Jane Smiley's beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire of all creatures for true love and freedom.